In reply to this comment by enoch:
In reply to this comment by IAmTheBlurr:
I'm so glad that I read the comments before actually watching the video, sounds like a total waste of time.

yeah.
you most assuredly would not have liked it.
and i dont recommend you try..
your head might explode lol.
i just liked the fact it was not dripping with dogma and the man spoke genuinely.
but you would find his arguments infuriating.

Thanks mang

It's just that I find these arguments sooooo tiring. They're old and it seems like they're being made just so people can feel like they're not loosing a part of their identity.

Yesterday, I got in to an argument with my boss about natural selection. Everything he said is tied to the fact that he identifies with his Jewish heritage and with his view that the bible is literally true. He wears the star of david around his neck and inscribes it into his tools so people know who they belong to. For his beliefs to be false, a huge portion of who he identifies himself to be would be lost.

Regardless of whether or not his beliefs are true, he wont question them because he's making a commitment error. He's already invested a lot of energy into his beliefs, and just like anyone else who makes a huge commitment, he's going to make all of the justifications in the world to continue the commitment rather than cutting his losses and correcting the error in rationality.

I did watch a few 1 minute clips randomly to get a feel for what he's saying and again, it's the same old tired argument for faith but I have a problem with faith. I requires that you believe something with zero evidence. Why is that EVER a good thing. Why should anyone be taught that anyone should believe something with zero evidence? Why (or how) does that idea persist? Shouldn't people be taught that it's always better to disbelieve until there is enough evidence and then set the standard for what constitutes as evidence?

I think this whole discussion stems from, again, the top-down outlook on how things work verses a bottom-up outlook. Humans are used to a top-down outlook. We have parents who are above us, set the rules, protect us, we have ideas first and then we construct physical items based on those ideas, we have government who sets societal rules that we generally obey. Our entire lives as humans is entirely approached in a top-down manor and since that's the only thing that we really know, we tend to project our outlook to the rest of the world. We assume that the universe would have been designed from the top-down, we assume that the universal physical laws must have been set from some other place greater than ourselves, we assume that there must be deities or a deity that is/are our cosmic parent.

In the end, after all of the little clips that I did watch, you're right, I found it totally infuriating but not primarily for the reasons mentioned above. I found infuriating because he's claiming to have a lot of answers but they're primarily based on misconceptions or incomplete information.

It's like the argument I had with my boss yesterday. I explained exactly what the textbook definition of biological evolution through natural selection. When I was done, his response was "That's not natural selection, that's something else". The speaker is doing just that, he's taking thoughts and ideas and redefining them to meet his own criteria for what he thinks they mean and saying "this is the correct way of thinking about it". It's not just moving the goalpost, it's changing the entire way that scores are made. It's beyond frustration.

But I digress, Either there is a god(s), or there aren't. The only way to say that there are with any degree of certainty, is through the accumulation of reproducible and tangible evidence, not through speculation, not through how it makes you or I feel, not through gut feelings, and not through anecdotal evidence. Until the standards are met, belief if irrational. Even if it's true that there is a god(s), belief in any of them is currently irrational.

Not really. Incitement to violence is illegal. Hell, even libel and slander are still technically illegal.

I said "criticize". Moving the goalpost to incitement to violence, libel, and slander is the application of a completely different subject. I said in the US you can criticize anyone you want about anything you want. Switching targets to inciting violence, libel, and slander makes a discussion on criticism implausible, as the terms have clear legal definitions - none of which are applicable to a discussion about generic 'criticism'. If that's what you wanted to talk about, then that's what you should have said in the first place, and I am not responsible that inaccuracy.

You're saying Glenn beck talking about needing to shoot people in the head before they shoot us in the head is non-violent, while blood libel, which is just a made-up story about Jews using the blood of Christian children in religious rituals, is violent.

No - I described what Glenn Beck said, which was necessary because of the inaccurate, incomplete citation and the subsequent misinterpretations of others. I made no statement about it being 'violent, or non-violent'. If we are to talk of making assertions, I will kindly request that you cease making inaccurate assertions about what I say.

What's the moral difference between this, and "the liberal Jews are stealing the blood of Christian babies for their rituals, and they're such total zealots for their religion that the only way you, Nancy Pelosi, can stop them from doing this is to put a bullet in their head. And you better do that before they put a knife in your children"?

I said what the difference was quite clearly above. One is a falsehood about a genetic race inspired by a government pogrom. The other is an opinion in a public forum by a private individual. The blood libel issue was a falsehood meant to be taken as a literal description of Jewish religious practice. Bombastic political rhetoric in a free society does NOT in any way equate to blood libel. If it did, then you'd have to shut down every political rally, every newspaper, every news broadcast, every radio station, or personal discussion in the nation. That includes the Videosift - including this very thread. I ask you... What is the moral difference between blood libel and the mischaracterization of what Beck's statement as a call for actual violence? Is not your attempt to falsely equate Beck's comment with actual violence against others just another form of blood libel or 'propoganda'?

Lies that dehumanize people, and make them sound like a direct threat to your safety are at best laying groundwork for justifying violence, and at worst are an explicit incitement to violent acts.

Does that mean you are comfortable with censoring speech and thought in the name of the greater good? Does that apply to the political left and thier "contextually violent" rhetoric as well? And who gets to make the decisions about what is or isn't crossing the line?

Nope - I reject the soft totalitariansim of censorship in the name of subjective, whimsical, biased political correctness. Freedom of speech trumps other concerns. The only time freedom of speech becomes dangerous is when it is limited by government, or self-appointed arbiters.

@bmacs27, I've got a few concerns about this lump sum idea. One is that you'd replace medicare with it, which seems like a bad idea right off the bat. Second, you push the problems with predictability of cost from government and insurance companies which must only worry about large pools of people and statistical averages, onto individuals who have literally no way of predicting their individual lifetime health costs. Third, any potential savings people make by limiting their spending benefits the US Treasury not themselves. Fourth, you're still leaving people without a safety net, both in the case of severe illness, or simple poor planning.

Those seem like huge issues to me, and the bit about savings benefiting the Treasury seems like a political poison pill to boot.

As for Barasso calling for HSA's, he wasn't actually presenting a policy prescription. He just said he liked HSA+Catastrophic insurance because it makes patients control their own costs. Obama was right to call that a rich man's solution, because you need to have enough disposable income to be able to save enough to cover out-of-pocket medical costs, and currently those are still largely driven by the bad incentive structure of our existing insurance system (in other words, they're ridiculously high).

You said, "If Obama would allow himself some humility here, and pitch a new proposal partially drafted by Republicans, I think he'd win the support he needs." I think this is a deeply misguided statement. The assumption here is that Obama's plan is some radical, left-wing proposal that's antithetical to Republicans, when in truth, Obama basically took previous Republican reform bills as his inspiration.

Since Obama pre-compromised in this way, Republicans just moved the goalposts, and said that Obama's plan is Stalinist health care, and if he wants to be reasonable, he has to drop the public option. So they dropped the public option. Republicans said instead of the House's surtax, they wanted to the tax exemption on employer benefits reduced or eliminated. So the Democrats did that too. The Republicans said they didn't want an employer mandate, so Democrats dropped that too. The Republicans said that they didn't want health insurance subsidies to pay for insurance that covers abortion, so the Democrats added language that did that too. Republicans said that they didn't want insurance companies to be required to cover end of life counseling (DEATH PANELS!!!), so Democrats dropped that too. Republicans said that they didn't want illegal immigrants covered, so Democrats put in strong language forbidding it, and setting up a system for enforcing it.

I could go on like that for quite a while longer. Republicans have been involved in this process from the beginning, and have extracted a ton of concessions from Democrats, in return for absolutely zero votes. The whole time, their rhetoric hasn't softened one iota -- it's still Stalinist, Nazi-ist, Socialist, Fascist Health care that's going to bankrupt our government, bankrupt our citizens, and get everyone killed, grandmas first.

That kind of thing makes it politically impossible for Republicans to turn around and say "well, now it's not so bad".

Obama started with a very moderate, bipartisan bill, especially considering the sizable majorities he still enjoys in both chambers of Congress. The idea that he needs to compromise more with Republicans is ludicrous.

I used to quite indignant at how they justified going into Iraq too, then moving the goalposts as new info came to light.

Then I remember what a fucking genocidal psychopath Saddam Hussein was, and decide the ends justify the means (in this case).

Of course, the American people have a right to be pissed at how it turned out in relation to expense and fatalities. The world is still a better place without Saddam in Iraq.